


The Last Night

by todisturbtheuniverse



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 22:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1874256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shayle spends her last night as a creature of flesh and blood with Caridin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Night

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by roisnoir on Tumblr: Shale and Caridin, the night before Shale is turned into a golem.

He remembers her as soon as she speaks, though she doesn’t sound even remotely like Shayle of House Cadash.

It’s something to do with the incredulity in her voice; she was always like that, forever disbelieving, one eyebrow raised in contempt. She carries a weapon no longer, of course, but Caridin can see the dwarf she once was, her hand on the hilt of her axe, eyeing him with suspicion.

She does not remember him, of course; the Ancestors  _would_ be that cruel, a final insult to cement his solitude. But he remembers her, and it’s that memory he carries into the Void: a fierce spark in brown eyes, the wild mess of dark hair, a breathless snicker, a fierce bellow. Shayle.

* * *

"You don’t have to do this, Shayle."

"I don’t," she quipped, hopping up to sit on his anvil—not  _that_ Anvil, but an ordinary thing made of iron. “That’s what  _volunteer_ means.”

"Don’t be smart." Caridin ground the heels of his palms into his eyes, hard enough to see stars. Stones, he was so tired. Seemed like he hadn’t slept in a week—not since Shayle had told him her decision.

"I can’t help it." She smirked; if she was at all nervous about the next morning, she didn’t show it.

"This is  _serious_.”

"And if you think I’m not taking it seriously, you’re wrong." Her mood changed in an instant. Her lips turned down, the crinkles of mirth around her eyes dissolving. "You’re right. This  _is_ serious. We need golems, and that means we need volunteers. And if I volunteer, more will follow.”

He hated to admit it—and so he didn’t, not aloud—but she was right. The darkspawn pressed closer every hour. They needed a stronger army, and they needed it now, or thaigs would continue to fall.

”You are a great warrior, Shayle,” he said, and for a moment, her eyes brightened again. “You don’t need to become a creature of stone to prove your worth.”

She slid off the anvil and planted her hands on her hips. “You haven’t said a word about this before now. Why are you trying to change my mind?”

"Has it occurred to you that I’ll have to do it myself?" He turned his back, braced himself against his workbench, closed his eyes. "I’ll have to destroy you with my own hands. And then I’ll funnel your free will—your entire being—into a magic wand that someone else can wave. You won’t be  _Shayle_ anymore.”

There was a long, thick silence, and then her feet—bare; how many times had he told her not to step foot in his workshop without boots?—padded across the floor to join him at the bench. She laid a hand on his arm, so gentle. She was never gentle.

But her voice hitched. “This is bigger than us,” she whispered. “If we don’t do something, there will be no  _us_. There will be no free will, period. The darkspawn will take it all, the whole world, and corrupt it.”

He hung his head. “I know.”

"I don’t want to," she went on. "I see the benefits, of course I do—I might even get to be immortal, and I’ll be even stronger than I am now. But I would never choose this if there was another way. If I’m really unlucky, I’ll get to see us all fall to the darkspawn, anyway, and I won’t even get to die with the rest of the world. There’s no comfort in that.”

A kind of cold terror had crept into his gut.

"But there can be comfort  _now_ ,” she offered, so quietly. “Tonight.”

He looked up; she tugged his beard, a tiny smirk on her lips. He laughed—breathless and sad—and kissed her, pressing her body against the bench, curling his hands around her strong dwarven waist, memorizing the taste of her smirking dwarven mouth. He would miss her even as she stood at his side, flesh no more, a giant made of magic and stone…

But for a few hours, there was this.


End file.
